The purpose of this paper is to analyze and interpret weather phenomenon of American indian paintings. From earliest times, visual artists of many cultures have found inspiration for enduring works in weather and the cycle of the seasons. Sun and clouds, violent storms, rains, and snowfalls have been used by painters to evoke an array of human moods, to mirror human actions. Representations of weather in all its variety have also been to express ideals of beauty and ideas about the moral and physical relationships between humans and the natural world. Particularly, Indian painting was already an ancient art when Spanish conquistadors forded the Rio Grande and moved into the American Southwest. For untold centuries aboriginal artists had expressed their reactions to their native land in pictures carved in rock, engraved on bone, painted on hides, wood, pottery, and cotton cloth-even drawn in colored sand. I consider that the typical Indian painting is imaginative, symbolic, two-dimensional. Its style may vary from supernatural to abstract. Subjects range from archaic religious symbols to portrayals of everyday life, from stylized landscapes to spirited hunting scenes. Painters are continually inventing ways to combine symbols of sky, harvest, or life forms, or to depict a certain dance, events. Eventually, Indian paintings in the exhibition derive from the ancient Indian traditions, and both in subject matter and manner of execution make a valuable and unique contribution to the body of creative art in America.

• 강철성(충북대학교 사범대학 지리교육과) | Chul-Sung Kang Correspondence